Our Elyse Carmosino had a story on Page A1 of Monday’s paper about Seasonal Affective Disorder — geared to the fact that for the next month, and even into January, there will be about five minutes of daylight.
Well OK. I exaggerate. We’re not in Alaska. But you get the idea. There’s precious little daylight, and for most people it’s dark when you leave for work and dark when you come home.
My problem isn’t this time of the year. I get Seasonal Affective Disorder in September. August, even.
Let me explain. I love daylight. My favorite time of the year is late May and all of June. Not only is the weather generally nice, but the sun is still shining brightly in the sky at 8 p.m. If you have to work late, you can still enjoy some sunlight when you get home.
I remember one year, we had to go to Indiana for a wedding. As one would know if one studied geography, Indiana is on the extreme western end of the Eastern time zone. Did you get all that?
It was still light as light can be at 9 p.m., as we were there for the summer solstice (which in my opinion is a bittersweet day because you have nowhere to go but down until December).
Ditto North Dakota. My trip out there was at the end of August, just when the creeping darkness really starts getting noticeable. But Williston, North Dakota, is on the extreme western edge of the Central time zone, which had the same effect as Indiana. It got late out there very late (if the significance of that last statement is foreign to you, Google “Berra, Yogi, famous quotes”).
There’s absolutely nothing to do in Williston, North Dakota, except go to a Walmart that’s as big in area as the City of Lynn. But you can do it at 9:30 at night and it’s still light out.
I am a keen observer of changing daylight patterns. It creeps insidiously into my life around the middle of July. All of a sudden, I have to rush around a little faster to get my walk in. I can still cut the lawn after dinner (yes, I still do that now and then), but I can’t lollygag.
When we get into August, it becomes more noticeable. All of a sudden, I’m seeing the rising moon before 7:30. I recall one summer going to a Patriots preseason game and seeing darkness creeping in around that time — and being very depressed about it.
It’s easy to understand why if you live around here. “Dark” and “cold” are synonymous. The earlier it gets dark, the colder it gets. And vice versa. It’s as if everything is timed to the same clock (how uncanny!). I wonder how people in warm-weather climates deal with this. My only experience with it is going on a Carribean cruise at the end of October, where it was somewhere in the vicinity of 90 degrees every day, and got dark before 7. I admit to feeling a bit disoriented by that.
That first Sunday in November is a killer. That’s when we turn the clocks back. People always say, “Yeah, but you get an extra hour to sleep in.” You do. But it gets dark before 4:30, and the clock keeps going backward from there. Last week, I started my long-way lap around Flax Pond (all the way up Euclid Avenue and onto Broadway instead of cutting down Peary Avenue and onto Magnolia) at 3:30. By 4:30 it was pitch dark.
Conversely, the nadir of this SAD phenomenon is Dec. 21, and the winter solstice. But it’s actually not a bad day at all, as from there until June 21, it gets lighter. Oh, sure, for a little while you have to put up with it. The Christmas lights help take the sting out of it, and thanks to them, the only month you just have to plod through is January. Once you hit February, the reverse happens. All of a sudden, you start noticing how light it’s getting. And, gladly, there is no more SAD. At least for me.
Once the Beanpot college hockey tournament is over, and I’m exiting the subway at North Station with a hint of daylight still in the air, I see light at the end of the winter tunnel. It can snow all it wants, because in the long run, this annual ghastly period of cold, dark depression is coming to an end.